Abstract

Strongly interacting quantum spin–lattice models exhibit a wide variety of phases with diverse and subtle magnetic ordering properties. Their detailed description within a unified microscopic framework poses a real challenge for the many-body theorist. By specific application to the spin-½ anisotropic Heisenberg model on a square lattice, we show how the ab initio coupled cluster method, which has already been very successfully applied to a wide variety of quantum many-body and field-theoretic systems, may be very efficiently and systematically implemented for spin–lattice models. Results for such local properties as the ground-state energy and sublattice magnetization are thereby obtained which are on a par with those from the best of the available alternative methods. Furthermore, we demonstrate explicitly how the coupled cluster method now also provides an effective and fully microscopic tool to yield systematic and accurate estimates of the zero-temperature quantum phase transition boundaries between states of different quantum order, as well as of the critical behaviour of the system in the vicinity of the transition points.